The Eight Mantras of OSR Gaming

Considering several sources and my own experience running and playing games on the OSR Pick-Up Games Discord server for the last two years, I have created a list of the (currently) eight mantras of OSR-style gaming I most frequently hear and repeat:

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1. Imagine the Hell out of it.

2. The OSR is rulings not rules.

3. Play worlds not rules. 

4. The OSR is a mindset, not a rules set.

5. The OSR is problems without prescribed solutions.

6. The answer isn't on the character sheet. 

7. Combat is a fail state. (I dislike this one. It's become dogma.)

8. The OSR is the players' story, not the game master's.

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Here's to another year of OSR gaming! 

— Stripe

Raven Familiar

Black, glossy feathers. A cunning stare. A raven. It knows its master's name and its master's name for it. If commanded, it will fly to his home, wherever it understands that to be. It flies without stopping 50 miles in an hour.

For a master who shows plenty of appreciation in the form of treats and baubles, it will also fetch small objects no heavier or bulkier than a silver teaspoon. It will sometimes steal shiny trinkets and secret them in places only it can find. Of course, anything it steals, it justifiably owns. It takes payments and trades, but never gives.

Like all ravens, it keeps watch for danger. It can take high perch and caw, wretchedly, upon the approach of anything a natural raven would find worthy of scorn, like huntsmen, lumberjacks, and riders. It also caws at restless spirits to tell them to return to the realm of dead.

It detests Mother Nature, her children, and her worshipers. It greatly prefers the roofs and steeples of the city. It eats whatever it wants and is not afraid to make itself an uninvited guest. It never defiles its own nest or makes a mess when perched on its master's shoulder or forearm, but it enjoys targeting those who annoy it.

It will defend its master with beak and talon inflicting 1-3 points of damage. A flying raven gains a bonus of + 2 on its first "to hit" roll against any one opponent due to its speed. It has three hit points, but those come at the expense of its master's maximum. If its master dies, so does it.

Presto's Hat of Conjuration

Usable once per day, any non-living object the conjurer can imagine may be pulled from this hat so long as he can recite a magical poem describing what's desired. It takes one round to recite the poem while waving one's hand in a circular motion around the up-turned hat. The inside of the hat will begin to glow with mystical energy. 

The poem must be spoken aloud in a firm voice. It must consist of at least two verses that rhyme. The use of nonsense words such as "abracadabra" will increase the likelihood of backfire or failure. The conjurer may only use a specific poem once in his lifetime. It must come from his or her own inner creativity; repeating a poem heard or read elsewhere will automatically fail to produce any effect.

On the next round, the conjurer reaches inside and pulls out whatever the hat delivers.

Whatever is pulled from the hat vanishes into thin air 2d12 hours later.

Durance Vile of the Storm Giantess Or: Not a Review of G2—Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl

Tonight, I read G2—Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl by Gary Gygax and I have some time to reflect on it after eating homemade tacos for supper. 

They were great.

I'm writing an ice cave dungeon. For my sake, my players' sakes, and for the betterment of the dungeon, I think it's important to familiarize myself with the archetypes of the genre.

G2 was published in 1978 and is what I personally consider the ice cave dungeon archetype. I've never ran nor played it, but I've read it thoroughly and I'm very glad I did. It was a quick, easy read. Took no effort. Would recommend. 

This post is not a review of G2. I'm just deconstructing Gygax's design choices to compare and contrast what I have planned for my dungeon. I want take inspiration from his genius while examining his choices from a modern Old School Revival perspective.

G2 is a two-level frost-themed cave dungeon designed for nine, ninth level AD&D characters. It can stand alone, but it's a direct sequel to G1—Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. 

Forces of the frost giant jarl are attacking human lands and the players are tasked with killing him. Gathering information is a stated objective, but it's largely window dressing. The reward is looted treasure, none of which is very extraordinary.

For an entrance, the dungeon features several obvious cave mouths in the sides of a canyon, much like B2—The Keep on the Borderlands' Caves of Chaos. The ravine's floor is hostile territory. In the caves, there's a whole lot of frost giants and some monsters they keep as pets, such as a mated pair of white dragons. Other encounters include giant humanoids attending the jarl's court.

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"As frost giants have been amongst those who have been in the reaving bands, the party is to deal with them as the hill giants have been dealt with. Death and destruction are to be meted out to the frost giants in the same measure they gave to the peoples below.

Any treasure taken is to be kept by the party; this is their reward for the perils they must face.

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Rocked back in my chair listening to music, I enjoyed reading the module in all its Gygaxian glory. 

Of course, I would hate running G2 out of the book at the table without notes, but that's true with every classic I've perused. Currently, I'm running T1—The Village of Hommlet on the OSR Pick-Up Games server. Information I need to find quickly is utterly buried in tangled paragraphs of convoluted sentence structures.

Reading Gygaxian at my leisure is a groovy trip, but I'd like to strangle him when using his work as reference tool at the table. 

I mean no disrespect to those who wrote the words upon which the foundation of my hobby rests, but we've come a really long way in the layout and "usability at the table" aspects of adventure design. 

G2 is a bloody hack-and-slash dungeon crawl, no big surprise since it's labeled a "tournament module." That's as dire a warning as a rattlesnake's tail to the OSR. "Combat is a failure state" has become dogma, but we can all agree we're not at the table primarily to roll a 20-sided dice back and forth. Excessive combat can become a tedious grind.

Kill monsters, take their stuff

Having no personal experience with what challenges an AD&D party of nine, ninth-level characters are capable of facing, I'm guessing the players are meant to battle their way through this chamber-by-chamber. Most rooms are basically, "Here's some monsters standing around looking at the walls. Some of them have treasure. This is how they'll fight the besieging players."

"The OSR is problems without prescribed solutions," so goes the mantra, but puzzles are traditional and I take them as an exception to the precept. It should be optional, but I like at least one puzzle in a dungeon. It doesn't have to be suitable for a five year old to solve, but I also like my puzzles fairly simple.

In the puzzle category, I suppose we could count a treasure chest with a combination lock, but if so, that's the lowest bar. Don't move the wrong disk or a needle shoots out. Meh. 

Role-playing opportunities would be far more rife if players were given the necessary tools for political intrigue. For example, there's a fire giant with no prescribed motivation other than "kill the invading players." He'll parley, but this is basically just "surrender or die." If the players had a peace treaty from the king if he betrayed the jarl or something, it might have been a fun encounter that didn't just lead to more slaughter.

Every dungeon needs treasure. This is especially true in the OSR where the mechanics of character advancement are usually measured by troves of looted treasure found while exploring (e.g., GP=XP) as opposed to killing or combat. In a B/X dungeon, I'd expect less than 10% of XP to come from combat.

We don't need a lot of explanation as to why the treasure is there, but we need something. That something is often what hooks OSR players to enter the dungeon in the first place. 

"They will fight only if attacked . . ."

The treasure's theme is mainly "what the visitors brought to the jarl as fealty." Visiting giants and ogres and trolls and other "big humanoids" are seeking the jarl's aid and protection from the human kingdom.

This is genius. It's so simple, but it checks all the boxes. 

"Funhouse dungeons" are monster menageries with little to no logic for their location of appearance. They can be fun, but not every dungeon is a funhouse. The presence and combination of some monsters need a little bit of explanation. 

We need it for player agency. Players need to know whether to expect the absurd, or if reasonable assumptions can be made. 

"Why is a Fire Giant in an ice cave?" That question, for example, deserves an answer. Gary gives us a great one that can be used several times throughout the dungeon. It pulls double duty for also being a good explanation for lots of treasure other than GP=XP. 

A good word for the ineffable, sublime quality of game play that's not combat, not role playing, not a puzzle, and not exploration escapes me, but it's of vital importance to the OSR. This je ne sais quoi can include those aspects of play, but they're not what's essential. "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." 

The Storm Giantess' Prison

In that vein, there's a storm giantess "damsel in distress" whom the wicked, mustache-twisting frost giant jarl is wooing by force. 

I love it. I would would run this "durance vile" as the centerpiece of the adventure. The whole thing would revolve around her. I'd call it "Durance Vile of the Storm Giantess." 

Imagine a Valkyrie, proud and noble—but she's 20 feet tall. A storm giant woman who towers over her lowly captor not just in physical stature, but in every other category of might and status as well. The players let her out and she is going to absolutely curb stomp him. What a great ally. 

So much potential for interesting role playing and fun.

OSR is a mindset. It's a style of play. An OSR dungeon crawl is not simply a series of pitched battles. In fact, that might be the antithesis of an OSR dungeon crawl.

G2 was not at all designed for OSR play. With a little help—perhaps reimagined as a stealthy political intrigue and rescue mission—it could easily make a make for a great time in OSR fashion.

However, I didn't read G2 to offer a critique. I read it for inspiration. For that, it delivered in spades. 

I'm looking forward to using all the inspiration I gained from reading this classic masterpiece. 

Maybe someday I'll get to run it! 

Thanks for reading!

—Stripe

One Year Anniversary

Got about five minutes left to post. 

Play-testing a dungeon. It's going really well. The OSR Pickup Games discord server is flourishing. 

Here's looking forward to another year! 

—Sharpe

Ring of Stigmata

Ring of Stigmata: A rusty carpenter's nail bent into a coil, the tip of which is twisted around its square head to form a crude center stone. Once per day, it can cause a victim within 60' the stabbing pain of having a nail driven through any or all of their hands and feet. The agony of crucifixion ruins concentration and causes victims to drop whatever they are holding. Timed right, it can make victims think they stepped on an object sharp enough to puncture their sole. The pain is severe, but lasts only an instant. Left lying on the ground, it acts as a caltrop, but does no actual damage. The first time it's used, the wearer will suffer the same affliction as the target. The wearer must then also save vs. Poison or contract tetanus: 1d4 weeks of incapacitating muscle spasms.

A Year in Stonehell Dungeon

I've served a lot of time imprisoned in Stonehell Dungeon's subterranean corridors. The last nine months of my stint was as Dungeon Master. Before I started running it, I was thrice a player at different tables, the first of which was also my first OSR experience ever. I've now ran it as an open-table game for twenty five sessions.

I've served my time in Stonehell Dungeon.

People ask me how well I like Stonhell Dungeon. They also ask about my experience running an open-table. Perhaps someday I'll make a post about game mastering for an ever-changing pool of thirty players (so far), but this post is mainly about Stonehell.

However, running it as an open-table dungeon has a profound influence on my opinion. It colors my every sentiment, both good and bad. 

There's a lot of both; good and bad. 

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I chose from between three ways to start my campaign. In order of my personal preference back then: Keep on the Borderlands, Barrowmaze, and Stonehell. So, Stonehell was my third choice. 

I tried the Keep first. Its dungeon, the Caves of Chaos, was just a tad too vanilla and too simple for my taste. If Gygax had at least given names and a line of description to his characters in the town and castle—or even just the most important ones—it would probably be our campaign's home base today. Alas, he did not. 

Barrowmaze was a little too verbose for me to disseminate before my attention span faltered. Right or wrong, I felt like I had to read it all to run it, and I just didn't want to invest that much time and effort. Not back then, starting my first OSR campaign, anyway.

With Stonehell, I didn't feel I had to read anything to run even the first session of it. At the same time, I knew I could run it drunk, sleepy, and distracted—not uncommon states of mind for an evening beer-and-pretzels game over the Internet. That level of ease of use at the table is hard to beat.

I wanted something simpler than Barrowmaze, but not so simple as KotB. Stonehell struck that perfect balance. It was just right. 

But it wasn't just right for running as an open-table game.

Treasure was way too "feast or famine." To mitigate some of that, I used a "silver standard" (1 sp = 1 xp; book prices in silver), effectively multiplying all treasure's value by ten. I also wrote a +1 weapon into practically every haul. Beyond that, I added a lot, no different than every DM's review of Stonehell I've ever read. 

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The core issue I have with Stonehell Dungeon as an open table is that there isn't enough bait to entice players to explore the levels. 

Without deviation, players—myself included—were compelled to go deeper rather broader lacking any good reason not to do so. Stronger monsters as gatekeepers doesn't cut it; even the most inexperienced dungeon crawler expects the risk to increase with the reward as one goes lower in the dungeon. 

I can say both as a player and as a DM, it's my opinion that the dungeon is not well designed for a straight-down approach, and I don't mean because of challenge. 

The experience is rather bland. Take the stairs from 1A to 2A and there's not even much of a scenery change. Same with 3A. It doesn't feel like you're delving deeper. Monsters get a little harder, but like I say, that's just not enough on its own to do it.

Since it wasn't designed with enough bait on the hook to get players to explore levels horizontally before descending, it should have been better designed vertically. Delving to lower levels should have been more mysterious, or threatening, or . . . something. 

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From my perspective as a player, and from what I've learned running Stonehell, Barrowmaze does a far better job for an open-table game. I've played about five sessions in Justin Hamilton's Sunday night Barrowmaze campaign on the OSR Pick-Up Games Discord server. 

I could immediately tell I chose poorly when I picked Stonehell over it. 

It has several "barrows," each that serve as a mini-dungeon. Explore the overworld a little, breach a barrow, plunder its gave goods, maybe solve a puzzle or whatever, then go home. End of session. 

That is an ideal setup for an open-table. You hit all your bases almost every game with few lulls of exploration "filler" sessions between scores. Perfect!

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What does this mean for my current Stonehell campaign?

If you can't tell, I'm dissatisfied with Stonehell for an open-table campaign, so let me come right out and say it. It's an amazing masterpiece, wonderfully written, easy to use at the table, and filled with a ton of fun and interesting things for players . . . but it's ill suited for our campaign. I've had a ton of fun game-mastering Stonehell Dungeon, but I'm ready to move on to something different. 

As a year-end review of our campaign, let's get it out of the way first: out of twenty five plus sessions shared by about thirty players, three were pretty bad. One of those was really terrible: the night we got lost exploring on the second level, but nothing really exciting happened. Blech!

By far and wide margin, most nights were "pretty good." You know, nights where everyone had fun and shared some laughs and we were glad we all played. Good times. 

However, six or seven sessions were truly epic. They were the type of session I can say, "This is why I play D&D."

• Ingrid the Dragon Slayer losing her arm in the battle against the giant undead cobra, the heroics to save her, and the tragic death of our campaign's first dwarf just steps from the exit. 
• Keri the Kingslayer earning his title while fighting beside his comrades against the orc chief and his tribe. 
• The intense battle with the water weird in the enchanted fountain that no one ever revisited the whole rest of the campaign. 
• The existential room where the doll was first discovered and later encounters with it. 
• The rise and fall of the party's alliance with the Neanderthals and all the bloodshed it caused. 
• The heartbreak of the "TPK minus one." The slow, agonizing death of every PC and hireling while ascending the stairs to the exit . . . with the greatest treasure trove ever plundered from Stonehell in their grasp. Ouch. 
• The ire of the medusa Lachesis and the illusions of her sorcerer. The courage the party showed when defying both. The victory of their first clash. The vengeance they won. 
• Storming the barbican in a wild, full-frontal assault. Not only surviving, but taking it. All the courage, wit, and luck that epic feat required.

I'm terrified I'm going to forget someone, but off the top of my head, I can recall very fondly characters played by Erika, CC, Josie, RandomWizard, Rosencrantz, King, KingPenta, Pralec, StarBorneHero, Lukas, Graytung, directsun, Modest Mace, and Ragnar. That's only fourteen, so I'm sure I've left someone out! Sorry! Remind me!

Overall, it's been a fantastic campaign. I've had so much fun, so little stress, and met so many great players who, through time, I've learned are interesting people I'm very glad to know. 

The good news is, most of the complements I've heard my players give Stonehell are archetypal features of any good megadungeon. The aspects of our campaign to which they seem most attached can be transplanted seamlessly as we move forward. 

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It's my hope The Undercrypt will be a fun, interesting and challenging multi-level dungeon designed specifically to be played as an open table. That means having several challenges that can be resolved in a single session.

I've been saying it for a few weeks now, but I'm still writing town, which for us will take the shape of the Keep on the Borderlands.

Stonehell will remain in our campaign world. It will physically replace the Caves of Chaos for which it shares a striking geographic resemblance.

The Undercrypt will be located on the same overworld map in the area designed for DM use, the Cave of the Unknown. 

Players can choose where they want to go on a session-by-session basis. 

I hope to see many returning faces after our month-long hiatus. I'm also excited to meet many more new people in the year 2021!

Looking forward to playing again soon! 

— Richard "Stripe" Sharpe

TSR's DragonStrike in 1993

DragonStrike Instruction Booklet

Recently, I read mention of DragonStrike, describing it as a flaming disaster. No doubt, financially, it probably was just that; we're talking about early-1990's TSR, Inc., here. That corporation no longer stands and memories of it mingle with controversy.

I loved DragonStrike as a 12-year-old child in 1993 and so did my friends. DragonStrike, along with HeroQuest ('89), is what got me into table-top role-playing games. Here I am, 27 years later, still running games—an open-table Stonehell using B/X, currently!

As a card-carrying member of the target age group for that product during the time it was released, I thought DragonStrike was awesome. Wonderful. Amazing. And, I'll be happy to objectively defend it as a great product.

It's anecdotal, of course, but it did a far better job at getting my young friends and I to play D&D than the Black Box ('91) or Rules Cyclopedia ('93) edition. The AD&D 2nd Ed. Players Handbook ('89), Dungeon Master Guide ('91), and Monstrous Manual ('93) were also on the shelves. Dragon Mountain ('93) looked so cool!

But I digress.

DragonStrike was a fantasy board game and a 100% complete role-playing system.

That's right, DragonStrike was  a role-playing system. It was a good one, too.

However, before discussing DragonStrike, one must first recognize its predecessor, the far more successful and popular HeroQuest fantasy board game. If it weren't for HeroQuest, there would be no DragonStrike. DragonStrike, like DragonQuest ('92), were both attempts to cash in on HeroQuest's success in 1990 and '91.

My God, I loved HeroQuest. Those miniatures! The little dungeon furniture! The pure and simple, almost platonic experience of a dungeon delve! It was very similar to a Rogue-like video game in board-game form.

HeroQuest was a fantasy boardgame, like DragonStrike, but it was not a role-playing game. One picked a character (Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf, Wizard) and chose a name, but the player wasn't making anything but tactical decisions. If HeroQuest is an RPG, then so is the video game Gauntlet ('85).

DragonStrike Instruction Booklet, pp. 20-21

The DragonStike rule book told players to imagine the fantasy world of around their characters, represented by playing pieces on the board, and to interact with it. That included speaking in-character with monsters and non-player characters. That's where I draw the the thin, fine line between "RPG" and "not-RPG."

Furthermore, players were told to try anything they wanted to solve problems: swim the river; swing across the pit; push the burning candelabra onto the table and hope it catches fire.

This is the heart of OSR to me: don't let the rules constrain your imagination. On paper, the rules are very simple, but they work just fine in actual game play. We had fun playing!

We were doing all the OSR stuff in all the OSR places. DragonStrike had four colorful, well-made game boards: a castle; a cave; a city; and an outdoors map that included a rocky high place, a forested area, a plains area, and a river with a bridge crossing it.

The castle could be used for any standard dungeon delve area, like a tomb or whatever. I even used it as a sewer. The city board was wonderful! We played out many town-based sessions in it, even including ones with no combat—pure role-playing. Tons of escort missions, fetch quests, and seek-and-destroy missions in the wilderness. All that said, we probably used the cave board the most.

Yes, there was a cheesy, campy VHS video packaged in the box with the game. It's mocked decades later by people who never played the game and weren't the target market audience anyway, I'll wager.

I recognized it as childish and comical at age 12, but (thankfully) the video was a completely separate part packaged with the game, not at all required to play. DragonStrike is not at all a VCR board game like, say, Nightmare ('91).

I never showed it to my friends, partly because it was so silly, but more because I just wanted to get right to playing the game, and play it we did! We all had a blast!